China’s BYD to leave Tesla in its wake after record EV sales in 2025

China’s largest electric carmaker, BYD, posted a fresh global record for electric vehicle sales in 2025, underlining the shifting balance of power in the world’s fast-evolving auto industry.

The Shenzhen-based auto giant said it sold 2.26mn fully electric vehicles over the year, according to a filing to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on January 1, AFP reports. Overall some sources report the firm as selling over 4.6mn vehicles. The EV figure meanwhile is the highest annual total ever reported by a single manufacturer and leaves BYD poised to overtake Tesla as the world’s biggest EV seller for the first time.

Tesla, which reports its full-year numbers on January 2, had previously disclosed sales of 1.22mn electric vehicles by the end of September. The US group narrowly edged past BYD in 2024, when it delivered 1.79mn EVs compared with BYD’s 1.76mn, but expectations are that figures for 2025 will fall short of the BYD figure.

Founded in 1995, inisially as a battery maker, BYD, which is short for “Build Your Dreams” has grown in recent years into a dominant force in China’s fiercely competitive new energy vehicle market; the largest of its kind globally. Alongside its pure electric models, BYD also produces a wide range of hybrids, giving it scale and flexibility at home where it enjoys exposure to over 1.4bn on a daily basis despite being unavailable in other parts of the world even with claims that BYD vehicles are sold in over 100 nations globally.

However, with domestic consumers becoming more price-sensitive, the company has been accelerating its push overseas, and in response to steep tariffs limiting its access to the US market of late, BYD has been gaining ground across south-east Asia, the Middle East and parts of Europe, unsettling established carmakers.

Tesla, meanwhile, has faced a tougher year, grappling with intensifying competition and softer demand in some key markets, adding further momentum to BYD’s overall global advance.